6/20/2023 0 Comments Trump news conference today“But frankly, watching him flail like this is just pathetic.” Trump’s lone nominal defender on the network, former Senator Rick Santorum, said the president’s accusations were without merit and “dangerous.” Anderson Cooper likened the president to “an obese turtle on his back, flailing in the hot sun.”ĭavid A. “We knew the president wasn’t going to lose gracefully, if he lost,” he told viewers. Even the loyal New York Post described the president as “downcast” and his charges as “baseless.” The talkers on CNN were even more withering: Jake Tapper deemed the appearance a disgrace. ![]() On Fox News, John Roberts described Trump’s remarks as the words of a man who was losing and trying to hold on to power. In states such as Pennsylvania, Democrats begged the Republicans who control the legislature to allow county officials to begin counting those early ballots before Election Day to ensure a prompt result, as they do in GOP-led states such as Florida, which Trump won. The health risk of the pandemic led to the surge in interest in voting by mail, and Trump’s attacks on the practice’s integrity resulted in a huge partisan skew in the people who availed themselves of that option. Trump might well pursue that course, but his argument was largely nonsensical, and his complaints about the late counting of mail-in ballots-as stale as they are at this point-stem from dynamics his own allies created. Trump gave the speech his opponents had been fearing, one that signaled he might use the considerable tools at his disposal-the machinery of government, willing Republican allies, compliant conservative courts-to hold on to power and thwart the will of the voters. What matters, of course, is not what Trump says, or how he says it, but what he does-and what his supporters do at his behest. Trump is a showman who prizes presentation above everything else, who watches his interviews with the sound off, who critiques appearances with precision, who famously mocks his opponents as “sleepy” and “low energy.” When Trump goes back to watch his performance tonight, he’ll see a salesman who wasn’t selling. The president’s most devout loyalists respond best to his energy, to the high-decibel passion, and occasionally indignant anger, that he brings to the stump. He read from a prepared statement on his lectern, barely looking up at the cameras, his voice a flat monotone devoid of the verve he deploys to whip thousands of people into a frenzy at his rallies. But despite his fighting words, his body language betrayed a far different tone. He promised “a lot of litigation” and held out hope that the Supreme Court, now with a 6–3 conservative majority thanks to his appointments, would save him. They were shocking things for a sitting president to say. He issued an extraordinary series of baseless charges about the election he is on the verge of losing-that Democrats were stealing the vote, that the media had deliberately released “phony polls” to suppress Republican turnout, that “corrupt” officials in Detroit and Philadelphia were finding Democratic ballots to whittle away his supposed lead. P resident Donald Trump tonight raised the threat of a constitutional crisis to a new level.
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